Crafting Design with Purpose

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Love is the Killer App Part 1

January 30, 2012

While I’m still reading this book, I wanted to share a few thoughts. Tim makes a strong case for reading books, specifically. He likens a book to a hearty meal. It fills you up, nourishes you, and prepares you for the day ahead to dispense your knowledge and bless others.

Other forms of reading such as magazines, newspapers, blog articles, and more are likened to snacks and candy. There are appropriate times for each but you’ll suffer if they are the only thing you’re digesting.

A non-fiction book is a whole meal all in one. Sometimes it can be a person’s lifework all wrapped up in one complete thought. They’ve worked through an idea, living through it every day, and have spent time to hash it out on paper to share with others. A magazine article, on the other hand, may be a single thought that hasn’t been fully developed. To use the food analogy again books are fully baked and ready to go.

1. We keep our emergency fund in a Vanguard money maekrt account. 2. In a perfect world, I’d like to have a year’s worth. But I’m not willing to skimp on the other savings we do to get our emergency fund up to 12 months from it’s current 6-8 months. 3. No, although I think retirement savings are super important, I think it’s crucial to have emergency savings that you can access without paying penalties, the way you do if you raid your retirement savings. 4. I really think six months should be the bare minimum. My husband got laid off in 2005, just four months after our daughter was born. He was out of work for 4.5 months, and then could only initially get a contracting job with no benefits. I was really proud of us for getting through that time with no income without having to create any debt and without raiding savings that would cost us penalties. One thing we hadn’t realized when we created our emergency savings fun is how expensive COBRA benefits are. With a newborn baby, we weren’t about to let our health insurance lapse, but it was $1200 a month in after-tax money, which was a shock. So even though we cut back our expenses to the bare minimum primarily by cutting out savings but also eliminating entertainment funds, hobby money, eating out, etc. we actually had slightly higher monthly expenses than we did before he was laid off. That was a huge surprise to us since we had assumed that we could cut our expenses a lot farther than that.